We Are In An Era Of Puppets And Puppeteers

'As we enter 2025, it must be acknowledged that there is a convergence of capital, influential people (from business and politics) and technology deciding the destiny of others in the name of pride, patriotism, nationalism, nation building, all of it thinly veiled disguises for personal profit and glory,' asserts Shyam G Menon.

It was a year counting on us to make it special.

2024 dawned with two major conflicts continuing unfazed -- the Russia-Ukraine war and the conflict in the Levant.

The ensuing 12 months could have been occasion to end them. As of December 2024, both conflicts are yet to be over.

If anything, the disturbance in West Asia has spread wider while reports from Ukraine speak of higher degree of sophistication in the weapons deployed.

As usual, diplomats and military experts remain fascinated by the strategies at play.

Our era of puppets and puppeteers

Both these conflicts and war in general are an affront to larger situations of emergency facing the planet, starting with climate change.

Wayanad's devastating landslide is India's best remembered climate-related incident from 2024.

More examples exist worldwide from the planet's growing list intense weather phenomena.

Yet humanity risks missing crucial milestones on the path to leashing in global warming.

Against this backdrop of a climate emergency, perhaps the single biggest crisis confronting the planet, have you ever heard of an eco-friendly war?

One with minimal pollution, recycled waste and zero carbon footprint? I haven't.

I don't think such a war exists.

By definition, war is an occasion for excess and trampling restrain underfoot.

It is the unleashing of a human mentality shaped on those lines, trained to thrive on excess.

Men and materials are moved burning fossil fuels recklessly while weapons are used with eyes solely on target -- as defined by location and intended effect -- or with an eye on future marketability of the arsenal.

Either way, with little concern for collateral damage or how all the damage and pollution caused so expands humanity's year end cost of mending.

And that is without mentioning other issues like displacement of human beings, the rise in number of refugees and the inflated bills of global trade.

As the transit of ships through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal came under stress, courtesy militant attacks linked to the conflict in the Levant, transport costs soared.

In another era, all these would have been adequate for nations to drive the immediate protagonists in the mess, to the negotiating table. Not in 2024.

Strategy, noted for its ability to study predicament devoid of emotion, is the prism through which, we now view the world and daily life.

Anything less is well, less manly. Two aspects render humanity's manly approach to these wars (the ones in Ukraine and the Levant), rather chilling and strategic.

First, despite sanctions imposed by the United States following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, select countries graduated to thinking strategically like the US itself is notorious for, have profited by intelligently circumventing barriers and doing business with the sanctioned lot.

The same goes for how container shipping was affected by the heightened risks in Suez Canal-passage.

Alternative, longer sailing routes appear accepted as a way of life even as they add to costs globally just when inequality in wealth and affordability is spreading.

Second, the cavalier approach to issues that matter, visible in the continued tolerance of conflicts and the willingness to profit from them or work around them, reveal a humanity that is losing its plot.

The question isn't so much whether any of these conflicts is the opening act of World War III, a possibility periodically discussed in the media.

The core issue is -- there is a progressive demise of common sense.

Underscoring the cavalier approach and the capacity for it we have, are the governments of various nations, at least some of them belonging to the political Right, that appear agreed on perpetuating this predicament in league with business interests, while at the same time playing to the galleries to enthrall supporters or making an outward show of concern for the cost of conflict.

More than one prominent head of State dipped his finger in the conflicts in Ukraine and the Levant, with nothing done to end the blood-letting but marks scored for one's chances at a Nobel Peace Prize.

As 2024 concludes, humanity genuinely seems to lack leaders, who can show armies and conflicts their place and restore priority to issues that matter.

All we have are social media creatures doing whatever fetches eyeballs.

Probably how the patrons behind these faces prefer their pets to be.

As we enter 2025, it must be acknowledged that there is a convergence of capital, influential people (from business and politics) and technology, deciding the destiny of others in the name of pride, patriotism, nationalism, nation building and a host of similar excuses, all of it thinly veiled disguises for personal profit and glory.

We are in an era of puppets and puppeteers.

A spate of elections and the new role models

Amidst this, the world's two biggest democracies -- one its oldest; the other its largest -- appear to be navigating a tricky patch in their history.

In the US, the elections of November 2024 saw former president Donald Trump regain office after a gap.

The coming months will show where Trump takes the US. There is a sense of nervousness about what may be in store.

To their credit, Americans take their personal freedoms -- among them, freedom of expression and speaking back to authority -- seriously.

That's where India differs. In 2024, the world's largest democracy had a mixed experience at the hustings.

In the general elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its prime minister of two consecutive terms, Narendra Modi, returned to power yet again.

This time however, the Opposition improved its tally in Parliament, thanks in big part to the trends in Uttar Pradesh.

Hopes rose of the Right-Wing's excesses and the decade-long drone of its agenda blending religion and politics, set to be curtailed.

But just as the BJP appeared checked in the general elections, in the assembly polls that followed, the Opposition fared badly in select states, particularly the big, wealthy state of Maharashtra.

Although questions were raised about the integrity of the electoral process, there is no denying the fact that the Opposition miscalculated.

Thanks to these kinds of political victories for the Right-Wing, India continues its drift as a political ecosystem sliding into a democratically authored autocracy along with the preservation at all cost of a majoritarian mindset.

One assembly poll verdict was particularly important. In the first such elections in Jammu and Kashmir since the region's special status was revoked, the INDIA alliance (signifying much of the national Opposition), won the majority of seats.

But following the elections in Maharashtra, the BJP's confidence revived overall and it was back to needling the Opposition whenever it could.

A peculiar art perfected by the BJP has been its literal reading of the Constitution, missing the spirit and direction advocated in the document.

It's a method of navigating elsewhere while still holding the map.

The party needn't worry for the institutions expected to correct such practices have displayed signs of playing along.

In 2024, there were instances when the country's election authorities came in for criticism.

Still the denial of 400 plus seats in Parliament to the BJP, hasn't been without its benefits.

Months later, in December 2024, that improved Opposition presence would be key to some vibrant discussions around the Constitution in Parliament.

Improvements to the opposition -- however small -- and significant communities from the minority segment staying calm despite provocations, have been silver linings in 2024.

Probably one place in India where gloom continued was Manipur.

While the scale of clashes there reduced, in 2024 the underlying tribal problem remained simmering and local leaders spoke up about what they saw as inaction on the part of government.

Among the utterly compliant lot under Right-Wing rule in India have been sections of the media.

Its contribution to creating narratives partial to Right-Wing greatness and playing down disapproval for the establishment hasn't been small and the same continued to be on show in 2024.

Grave questions about what Right-Wing rule actually means, prevail, not merely due to what it signifies for those declining to subscribe to majoritarianism but also due to the cozy ties between big business and the political Right, the manner in which, voices of dissent and protest have been sought to be stifled and the willingness of the Right-Wing to block opposition by any means possible so that power doesn't slip from its hands.

In 2024, the coziness between big business and the Right-Wing seemed a pattern globally.

In the US presidential elections, the world's richest person Elon Musk openly endorsed Donald Trump's candidacy and campaigned for him, eventually ending up with an assignment to slash government's influence awarded him by the president elect.

For many people, this coziness between big business and the Right-Wing is cause for concern as it enhances scope for the powerful and influential to manipulate government.

In India, the coziness has also been criticised for how it encouraged the rise of business monopolies.

The willingness of governments and the wealthy class to treat others as collateral in their recipes for economic growth, shocks.

A popular example was an IT czar's call for longer work hours in India with scant regard for what it meant to other people's definition of life.

Not to mention the move also seemed to betray a discreet self-conferred approval for the person to be showcased as a role model.

It is a trend of our times -- the tendency of technocrats, Right-Wing big wigs and generally anyone in service of GDP to view themselves as role models while life stays unseen, an unused invitation to multiple possibilities.

Incidentally, also in 2024, was the news report about a young woman who died allegedly due to overwork.

Mercifully, the controversy over long work hours appears to have settled as a matter of individual choice.

Knowing big business and the political Right -- both of which delight in marketing super constructs, particularly those oriented towards GDP and superpower -- the last word on that controversy may not have been heard yet.

Generation gap and the act of being away

For me, Right-Wing perversity in India peaks in the debate around population.

In 2024 too, seniors from the top echelons of the Right-Wing, warned against allowing the pace of human reproduction in India to relax too much.

Likelihood of societal breakdown -- that was mentioned.

It amazed.

First, the warnings as usual, came from those with less years left to live.

If not dabbling in another generation's affairs and how that generation wishes to imagine life in consonance with larger realities on the planet, I don't know what else these alarmist proclamations are to be called.

Second, in the more than five decades I have spent on Earth, my corner of existence has never experienced a shortage of human beings.

India was perennially a crowded environment.

If anything, the oversupply of people in India eroded the value of human life like math acquiring an auto immune disease.

It surrendered human existence to a mad pursuit of money justified by the widespread compulsion to marry, raise progeny and support one's family.

It has made the English word 'desperate' the most apt adjective to describe Indian life.

From the depths of a severe rat race born so, how is it that we can only imagine making the pressure cooker ambiance worse by continuing to multiply?

One explanation for the alarm bells ringing is that the priorities behind it are mainly three -- fear of workforce shrinking, market clout reducing and strength in numbers in religion and community, dwindling.

Very few grasp the underlying cynicism -- the human being has value only as an ingredient in industrial production, a consumer spending and keeping the market alive, and as a unit reinforcing some collective or the other.

The idea of life as an individual experience cast otherwise, stands overlooked.

Philosophically, it signifies the early parts of that dangerous slope towards rubbishing freedom.

Amidst hypertension in India over what is nothing but a deceleration in population growth after years of incessant rise, next door to us, China didn't appear alarmed at losing its pole position in this depressing contest.

It didn't feel dethroned when India snatched the title of most populous country from it in April 2023.

It must have felt relieved; any country would.

One could even argue that China slipping to second place in the population stack happened at the correct time; exactly when new challenges to employment like artificial intelligence are on the rise.

And as the difficulty in convincing our deluded elders to let new generations live differently continues, the young try their best to leave.

They study engineering and medicine in countries never spoken of before for their expertise in these fields, often ending up doing neither and working in a totally different field.

A friend in East Europe, who spoke to such students washed up there, summed it up so: Whatever they wound up doing, they are happy they made it to Europe.

Indians, desperate for paying work, were even found deployed on the Russian side in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Better away and unseen than at home living life as defined by others -- it seems.

Not all was gloomy

Meanwhile with the young denied room to tell the elders that the world has changed, that familiar desperation rules, the invisible elephant in the room.

Till such time as we are comfortable with a shrunken population and don't have to resort to above said circuses for proof of self-worth.

It won't come easy for in the imagination of the political Right (and popular imagination), the hard work, resilience and survival instinct of the Indian is irreversibly attached to his/her high-pressure, ultra-competitive ecosystem.

Plus, desperate situations and competition between communities are ideal breeding ground for the fuel at the heart of Right-Wing imagination -- insecurity.

2024, like the years before it, featured instances of a myriad fears reminded to us; fears ranging from fear of the other to what may happen if we don't stand united under a Right-Wing umbrella.

In so many such ways, yet another year was ensured defacement and burial in the passage of time.

Like 2025, pristine and filled with hope as it dawns, 2024 too was once a clean slate counting on us to make it special. Then it ran into us. But hang on, I think we forgot a bright spot.

For a little over a fortnight in July-August 2024, Paris treated us to an Olympics like none in the recent past.

And it had less to do with sports and more to do with how it was imagined.

Two aspects linger in this writer's mind.

First, the opening and closing ceremonies emphasized mass drills, orchestrated collectives and such, less.

Notwithstanding backlash over one scene, these ceremonies breathed free, celebrating the individual.

Second, the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as some of the disciplines at the Games, made use of the local environment.

Triathlon in the Seine may have been controversial but it was thought provoking.

It gave one the feeling that even as humanity and the environment it authors risk imploding, not all is lost; we can still draw back from the edge, we can still clean up and salvage the situation.

In language, that may be nearly (certainly not exactly) the opposite of desperate. It's called 'hope.'

Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.

Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff.com
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com